Cheap art will be just that. The true value lies in commitment and hard work. This is just a tool and without a creative mind operating it the results will hold no magic. Did photography kill painting? I think both are doing and developing rather well.

Time Rodent (the title is not final) is based on the short film of the same name and is based around vehicles. There’s not much info about the story or the backgorund, but the general premise is pretty interesting. You’re in the world, which was ruined by some unknown event.

Very simply put, it’s about driving from A to B while avoiding getting killed and learning what happened to the game’s world and where all of it’s inhabitants went. Generally speaking, as of today, there is no master plan graved in stone. I’m quite new to game development and find the non-linearity to be very exciting (and still unexplored territory). I really enjoy creating universes which unfold during the creation process, sometimes leading to completely unforeseen directions.

Nothing is really clear so far. However, this game stands out for different reasons.

It has an amazing AI. The developer aims to deliver a believable, human-like behavior of the NPC drivers. Ondrej really feels that poor AI in open world games ruins the immersion and breaks your experience. He doesn’t want some dumb driving with cheating. Instead, he’s aiming to do something very fun.

The visual style is realistic and surreal at the same time. The physics is real. The world is not.

It has taken a considerable amount of development time to come up with a system which allows the NPC cars to drive in a way that is fully natural, with no “cheat” abilities, while still being good enough to keep up with a player.

The game has very interesting style. It’s sort of very realistic. With nice lighting, understandable, readable assets, but there are also elements of surreal, that blend seamlessly into the world. This creates a unique quirky atmosphere. It feels sort of like a dream. The game has dynamic lighting, weather effects, deformable terrain. The size of the world is roughly 4x60km.

The game is still a work in progress. There’s a lot of things to do, but it definitely has a lot of potential. Looking forward to hearing more about it.